


Of Stumbling Upon Each Other and Photographing Moments

by ponderinfrustration



Series: Tender Increments [3]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Kissing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 05:30:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16696354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: Erik and Christine, and the places they find each other in.





	Of Stumbling Upon Each Other and Photographing Moments

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Tinder Date](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14372181) by [ponderinfrustration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration). 



It becomes almost a habit, to find each other in the most unusual of places.

For example, Christine is taking the scenic path out of campus one day, trying to decide whether or not she really needs another ring binder, when she finds Erik, sitting in the crook of a tree. His legs are folded up, long and black-clad and beautiful, bracing himself against the fork in the trunk, and he has his earphones in, his eyes closed. Her breath hitches at the sight of him and she stops, caught on this image of her man, who doesn’t realise he’s even being watched. If she could she would hold the moment, would preserve it as it is right now, the sun breaking through the leaves, dappling his skin, his hand lying limp in his lap. But such magic is beyond her, and the closest thing she can do is to snap a photo of him, two, three, her phone on silent so he does not hear the click.

(She sends one to Nadir, with a caption about their fae boy, knowing he will appreciate it.)

And Erik, for his part, is not even aware that she is there, until fingertips brush the back of his hand, and a soft kiss is pressed to his cheek, and he jolts awake from a doze, one of his earphones falling out and breaking off Paganini. When he comes to his senses, Christine is smiling at him, and his ears burn with the force of his blush.

Three days later, when she is going to an after-hours history seminar in his department (a statistical analysis of the 1918 flu pandemic in honour of the centenary) she finds him curled up, asleep in the black leather chairs by the window in the English department on the floor beneath his office. She had half-expected to find him reclining in the kitchen upstairs, sipping tea and frowning into his laptop. It catches her off-guard to find him here, and she pulls up, suddenly, acutely, aware of Richard (whose very presence is enough to piss her off three quarters of the time, and who still asks her on dates even though she has emphatically told him that she has a boyfriend) from her Spain and Portugal in dictatorship seminar, and she smiles at him weakly and says she’ll be up in a minute.

She shakes Erik awake gently, and he jumps, hat falling off and sunglasses sitting crooked on his face (she has learned he wears those glasses all year round, and calls it going incognito, but she knows it’s because the light hurts his eyes sometimes and gives him migraines, and they help to distract from his face a bit). His hair is mussed, his good cheek crinkled from leaning against the arm rest, and she smiles at him.

“You’ll get a pain in your neck from sleeping there.” _And your back, and your shoulders, and spend tomorrow grousing about it._ But she refrains from adding those bits, and he reaches up to draw her down, and presses a kiss to the edge of her lips.

“Are you dropping by later?” His voice is rough from sleep, and she knows she shouldn’t drop by later, should text him instead and let him rest, and get down to work on her Salazar essay, but if she can bribe him with the promise of her presence…

“Only if you go home now.”

He looks at her blankly for a moment, and then nods, his lips twisting. “Fair enough.”

She is careful as she helps him to his feet though he groans anyway, joints already stiffening up. But any check of worry she might feel is dispelled by the way he smiles as she kisses his cheek, and fixes his glasses, and settles his hat on his head. “You’re very wifely,” he murmurs, kissing her and she huffs a laugh.

“Trust me to find a husband who won’t mind himself.”

Erik snorts, and hugs her before scooping up his bag. He tips his hat as he walks away, like a proper gentleman in some sort of Victorian romance, and as she climbs the stairs to her seminar she texts Nadir to keep an eye out for their wayward man.

The library is sweltering with heat when it is Erik who finds Christine. He has taken up wandering through the history section every now and then, when he longs to see her but they are each too busy. As if by surrounding himself with the proof of these things she loves he can feel closer to her, as if ghosting his fingers over the spines of books can somehow equate to carding through her curls, could ever equal trailing his fingers down her cheek, down her arm, down her side. He never usually sees her, but for a few enchanted, tranquil minutes, the promise that he might is enough to soothe the aching in his chest.

But on this day the stars align and he finds her, sitting on the floor, a box of little chapbooks from a seminar series in the nineties beside her, several of the tiny editions scattered, held open with rulers as weights as she photographs the pages.

To his mind, it would make more sense to scan them, or photocopy them, but she looks as if she might know what she is going, and before she can notice him, he takes a snap of her snapping the pages, and sends it to her.

When her eyes raise to meet his, the half-surprised, half-embarrassed smile she gives him is better than the dawning clarity of the world clicking together when the notes come to him of their own accord, better than the lightheaded fever of getting somewhere when he’s composing, better than the overwhelming feeling of knowing when the statistics his laptop spits back all make sense.

It is better than anything, anything he has ever known, and he reaches down, and takes her hand and squeezes it, before he steps over the books and leaves her to her work.

(She repays the favour only a week later, finding him standing in the English section, gazing up at the black hardback copies of all the Sherlock Holmes stories, the ones that he took out in the Christmas of his first year and read before going to the cinema with Nadir to watch _Game of Shadows._ They each had had a good bit to drink, and he has a vague memory of declaring his love for Jude Law and crying afterwards as Nadir tried to shush him. Christine hasn’t heard that story yet, but the time will come when she will. For now she brushes up against him, and takes his hand and kisses it, before she moves on, unaware of the lovesick look he gives her as she passes.)

It’s a hot day in May when she hands in her last essays for the semester, and afterwards her and her class go for lunch in O’Neills, and a couple of pints. The sun is high and the afternoon lull well set in when he finds her, sprawled under a tree on the green, her sunglasses firmly in place and a biography of Edward VIII open on her chest. Even if it were not for the biography (heavy books are always the giveaway that it is his beloved he has found, and not some other blonde beauty wearing shades), he would know her by the way she has one leg folded under the other.

His knees crack and ache as he lowers himself down beside her (his joints have been more angry than usual the last few days, so much so that not even the deep heat creams can bring him any relief, and paracetamol barely makes a dent; he suspects it’s down to too much essay-writing and not enough stretching), and gently shakes her awake. Out here is no place for her to fall asleep, even if it is warm and sunny. She blinks slowly up at him, and her smile is crooked.

He’s not used to seeing her tipsy when he himself is dead sober, and it is oddly endearing. And the cutest thing in the world.

He stretches out beside her, one arm twisted up under his head as a pillow, his other hand taking hers, and she leans into him, pushes the book away, and beneath the spanning branches, the dappling leaves, they talk softly, and kiss, and he takes her in his arms, and she nuzzles into his chest, and it is as if they are in his cramped bed at home, twined together, Nadir in the next room.

Anyone walking by would mistake them for just another student couple, relaxing in the heat, but they are so much more than that, and it is in his soft laugh when she complains in her matter-of-fact way that three-quarters of what she’s read today has been bollox, and tells him with no faint note of pride that she took great pleasure when she “accidentally” let Richard from her seminar see the lockscreen photo of Erik kissing her, and it is in her giggle when Erik kisses her hair, berates her for falling asleep under the sun, extracts a promise that she will be sure to visit him every evening now that her essays are out of the way, tells her about the computer that crashed in the lab and deleted most of the model that John Henry and Morgan had made of the Crystal Palace, so they stayed in the lab all weekend, forty-eight hours straight, taking it in turns to sleep and to run out for food, so they’d have it fixed in time for the deadline. It is in all the tiny harmless little things they’ve shared in the two months they’ve been together, the fact that they are so much to each other.

And it is in the tiny harmless little things in the months and years they have left to come.

(And holding each other, talking, they are oblivious when Nadir happens to walk by, and Nadir would recognise Erik’s ungainly form lying anywhere. They are still oblivious when he smirks, and takes several snaps of them that he sends but which they will not get for hours yet, and he decides that this must be how Cupid feels when his work is done, and is barely able to contain his desire to tease them. There will be all the time in the world for that later, but for now he leaves them, twined with each other, and his heart is light as he wanders to the library to return the final stack of books of his student careeer.)

The two lovers beneath the tree remain oblivious, as they murmur and kiss, of the whole world carrying on around them.

And in these moments, they prefer it that way.


End file.
